Page 26 of Where the Snakes Sleep

Maybe he already does.

Maybe that’s why he keeps insisting I need him, that I should come to him if I need anything, anything at all. Maybe the only thing more annoying than his ego is that he’s right. Except instead of needing him for work around the cottage and grocery runs and help with my French, I need to crawl inside his skin and see if I can infect him with this hunger, this gnawing, ugly wanting that makes my hands tremble, and my voice go high and thin whenever he gets close.

I roll over and bury my face in the pillow, breathing in the sour-sweet smell of sweat and old detergent, and groan.

This is a problem, no doubt about it. Not a catastrophic problem—technically speaking. Camille isn’t married, as far as I know, and I’m single.

We’re both adults.

But it is a problem. Mainly because the prospect of looking at him again makes my stomach convulse. I groan, louder this time, and kick one foot against the thin mattress.

Maybe I don’t have to see him. Maybe my solution is simple—stay inside this dilapidated cottage for the rest of my natural life, subsist on stale bread, moldy cheese, and hope Camille eventually moves away or dies.

I lie on my back for another minute, listening to the vibrator still humming against the rumpled bedspread. At last, it becomes impossible to ignore. I snatch it up, yank out the batteries, and carry it downstairs like contraband, clutching it to my stomach even though the cottage is utterly deserted.

The bathroom here consists of a chipped claw-foot tub that sits beneath a single cracked skylight, a toilet that only flushes if I hold the handle down, and a pedestal sink with separate hot and cold taps—because apparently in rural France, moderate water temperatures are considered an affront to God.

I rinse myself off, scrub the toy clean, then stand naked before the spotted mirror over the sink.

My reflection looks guilty as sin. My cheeks are still flushed; a strand of hair sticks out at a ridiculous angle; my lips are pink and raw where I’ve bitten them. A faint red mark crosses my chest where I pinched myself too hard.

“You are never going outside again,” I mutter.

The naked idiot in the mirror doesn’t look convinced.

Despite my plan of never leaving the cottage ever again, I still get dressed, just because walking around naked in here seems like a great way to add tetanus to my growing list of problems. I pull on loose cotton shorts and an oversized shirt, then head downstairs, my face turned away from every window that might face Camille’s property.

For almost an hour, I stick to my plan, but then I hear the choked roar of a diesel engine, idling in the narrow lane.

I freeze halfway through prying a warped strip of trim from the sitting-room wall. The engine cuts off, and a car door slams as distant voices carry through the thin wooden walls.

One of the voices is Camille’s.

“Fuck my life.”

I drop the pry bar with a clatter, heart hammering so hard I barely hear the three raps against the wood.

“Ryan?” Camille calls expectantly through the door.

My windows are open, my music still playing upstairs. He knows I’m here; I can’t pretend otherwise.

“I’m coming.” My voice cracks.

I hate everything.

I cross the room and open the door just far enough to poke my head through. The afternoon light slants over Camille Moreau, standing on the dusty flagstones in charcoal trousers and a pale blue shirt whose sleeves he’s neatly rolled to his forearms. Behind him stands another man in his late fifties with stocky shoulders and sun-browned arms, wearing faded work trousers and a cheap polo. A white van rests by the roadside.

Camille’s eyes sweep over my face slowly, pausing a fraction too long.

I want to die and also punch him.

“Good afternoon,” he says, voice calm.

I narrow my eyes. “Hi.”

A ghost of a smile curves one corner of his mouth. I want to throttle him. Or climb him. Not sure which.

“This is Monsieur Barthes. He repairs roofs.”